Use da Gretchin!
by The Final Lament
Summary: With no dakka, no choppas and no food whilst trying to wage a great Waaaggh! upon the galaxy what is a Warboss to do?
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Sadly I'm running out of ideas so I guess I'll just have to USE DA GRETCHIN!

Before writing this I spent some time trying to get into the ork psyche, it was worryingly easy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40k.

Quote for the Day: "The enemy is well armed and well equipped; they believe they have the gods on their side. Let them believe; we have the tanks on ours."

A Waaaggh! in action is a magnificent sight, millions upon millions of orks fighting their way through countless regiments of Imperial Guard, and at times overwhelming companies of Space Marines (and more often than not a large number of orks in their haste to reach the front lines). The only real flaw in this awesome combination of genocide, street fight and bar crawl was the general lack of intelligence of it's Warboss. The following account is taken from one of the most spectacular failed Waaaggh!s led by one Spike 'eadbreaka who having gathered enough orks to form a Waaaggh! had ordered that all orks set off at once "and no ya ave'nt got time ta grab 'at power klaw ya miserball grot" needless to say this remarkable display of stupidity resulting in over fifty million orks descending on Orsa Prime unarmed and without food. Obviously steps would have to be taken and sacrifices made to address the problem.

"Boss! Boss! We'z gots a problem." A Flashgitz Nob came hurrying over to the Warboss.

"Yeah, un what id it?"

"The humiez is attacking and ma boyz got no dakka an' no choppas"

"Soz whys ya botherin' me then?" Said 'eadbreaka, backhanding the offending Nob with joy at being handed a reason, not that he needed a reason.

"Well... yous da boss so it up ta yous to see that da boyz has stuff loik 'at."

The Warboss quietly thought about this for a while before finally coming to a thought out conclusion.

"USE DA GRETCHIN!"

"Roight Boss."

Brother-Captain Rick O'Che had fought orks many times before and hadn't seen a new strategy in years which was why he was thoroughly taken aback when a green fleshy object bounced off his armour.

Round pleading eyes gazed at him, he lifted his foot.

"Help us!" the small green thing begged. The foot came down with a satisfying splat which caused a cheer from the watching orks along with shouts of "do it again!". Another gretchin bounced off his armour, and another, and another finally knocking the space marine over as around him his Battle-Brothers also fell to sheer weight of numbers. The gretchins armed with mere sticks and keeping the space marines down by weight alone beat the other members of the Ultramarines 6th company to a pulp. Slowly. Till finally all that was left was the Captain who finally pushed the small green annoyances off of him just in time for a ork Nob – thrown by the enterprising Warboss who'd got a bit carried away – to land on his head, breaking his neck despite the armour. Despite hundreds of gretchin dead through broken spines and skulls the battle was generally seen as a great success particularly by the Flashgitz who liberated guns from the bodies of the space marines and promptly welded them together for superior dakka. Also rather happy by the surprising result of the battle were the Mega-Armoured Nobz who were glad to be Mega-Armoured again, and better yet the armour wasn't likely to electrocute them every ten seconds.

Now with maybe sixty out of fifty million orks and countless gretchin supplied, the starving army turned it's mind to other matters.

* * *

Author's Note: This idea came to me when I was talking to some other 40k players, we were discussing the ork fighta-bomba and it's guided missiles, eventually we meandered to other uses for the gretchin, ranging from shovels to saws for the killa-kans. More chapters on the way


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Uh I dunno...

Disclaimer: I still do not own Warhammer 40k.

Quote for the Day: "If at first you don't succeed then skydiving's not for you."

* * *

"Boss! Boss!" Nob 'ead-choppa – a Slugga Nob – had found himself the unfortunate emissary of the other nobs. After trying to run away and finding himself bodily thrown into the Boss's tent he was doing his best to get in and out as fast as possible.

"Yeah? Wad id it?" grunted Warboss 'eadbreaka.

"It's da boyz, Boss, theys starvin', we'd got nuttin' ta eat."

"So steal it from da humiez."

"Da humiez 'as run off Boss, and they tooked their stuff with 'em."

The Warboss thought about this carefully before finally coming up with an idea which seemed ok. By ork standards it was almost genius.

"USE DA GRETCHIN!"

The Nob left the tent with almost indecent haste, sped up even further by a tactically placed boot from the Warboss.

After a few minutes the screaming started.

* * *

The mekboys examined the wreckage of the buggy whilst around them the gretchin began carefully putting it back together again under precise instructions from the mekboys "Now put the round spiky bit on the long square thingy". The Big Mek lifted up the back wheels checking the wheels carefully.

"It da brakes. Oi, you grot," He pointed at a hapless gretchin. "Fetch some of da brakes from da bitz box ober 'eir." The gretchin ran off to do as it was told whilst the Big Mek continued to show the mekboys how to repair the buggy, punctuating it's lesson with repeated blows to the head and smashing the faces of the more stupid (used advisedly) mekboys into one of the wheels, it was during this that the gretchin returned.

"Sorry, boss but there no brakes left..." The gretchin grinned falsely prepared for the inevitable kicking it was about to receive as it tried to sidle away, before it had got even one metre away the Big Mek had grabbed it with it's spare hand – the other hand being occupied with pressing a mekboy's face into a wheel.

"No brakes! No brakes! How we supposed ta make da stuff work if we got no brakes!"

The mekboys stayed silent unsure of how to answer.

"Any ideas boyz?"

The mekboys repeated themselves.

The Big Mek scratched it's head with the hand holding the gretchin as it thought about what to do.

'No brakes, meant no trukks and stuff for da Boss, No trukks meant da Boss wouldn't be happy, an' if da Boss was unhappy 'at meant there might be a new Big Mek soon.' The Big Mek looked at mekboy with it's face pressed into the wheel then at the screaming gretchin in it's hand, it's eyes lit up as an idea hit the ork with typical brutal style. It _liked_ this idea.

The brakes squealed as the buggy slid round the corner, the funny thing was that even after the ork driving took it's foot off the brake, the screaming continued. The two racing buggies turned another corner the brakes screamed even louder. The final lap started and both the driving orks were grinning madly even the one losing looked rather pleased.

With just two turns left the brakes went silent; at the end of the lap the ork got out and shouted at the pit crew.

"Why da brake stop screamin'?" One of the orks looked under the wheels with a professional eye.

"Da gretchin dead."

As the driver stormed off one ork nudged another.

"Next time put it feet first."

* * *

Author's Note: I know the speech is slightly off but some words are hard to make orky and anyway mekboys are a bit (comparatively) smarter than other orks.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Sadly dear reader this fic may end soon as I'm running out of good jokes fortunately i've decided to just USE DA GRETCHIN!

Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40k nor am I profiting from this fic blah blah blah

Quote of the Day: "A friend in need is a pain in the ass"

* * *

"Boss. Uh. Boss? There'd a 'erda wants ta talk with ya 'bout some'ing."

"Send da runt in den."

The Herda turned out to be quite nervous upon actually meeting it's Warboss, which is quite understandable when it's twice the size you are and has a reputation for heavy-handed stupid decisions. The Warboss however failed to notice this completely because a) all ork accents are practically unintelligible anyway and b) the Warboss thought that anyone who would rather tend Squiggoths than fight was downright unorky even if said Warboss would need said Squiggoths when an actual fight started.

"Well whadda youz want?" The Warboss yelled.

"Well, it loik dis Boss, I gotta muck out de Squiggoths evry week see, and I broke me lasst shovel uh month back so's da Squiggoth shits now knee 'igh."

"Knee ight? Dat int 'at big."

"It da Squiggoths knee Boss. An' if I don't get sum new shovels quick loik then da Squiggoths gonna get ill."

The Warboss seeing a problem with his war plans put his arm round the herda in what he hoped was a friendly manner.

"Dat's some problem, runt, so eres what I wants ya to do..."

The gretchin heaved the squiggoth dung into the wheelbarrow, before surveying it's follow workers. After being given shovels they'd been told to get to work and were half finished already. It glared resentfully at Herda who had given the order. The newly promoted Nob was quite pleased with itself, not only was the Warboss listening to what he said but he could now delegate the messier jobs if he wanted.

Meanwhile the gretchin were busy complaining.

"Dis has gotta be da worst job I ever done. Even being thrown at humiez is betta than dis."

"Tell me about it." complained another. "This job stinks."

"Ya think." said his shovel

Author's Note: Feedback appreciated. Sadly I'm starting to run out of steam (and gretchin) so updates will be becoming less frequent however I have one other 40k fic in the works and the idea for another. As well as upcoming updates for my pokemon and Runescape fics and even a sequal to my Night World fic. Also look out for an Alien fic coming soon.

That is of course if I ever get my act together and sit down writing for a few hours


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: I am aware that this fic is dying already, I think I can wrestle a few more chapters out of it but please do tell e if the quality drops even further.

Quote for the Day: 'I have come to the conclusion I am merely a product of my own overactive imagination'

Author's Note 2: You'll never guess how shocked I am that other author's in 40k are starting to put in Quotes of the Day, after checking the dates on these I realised how much people were liking this fic, It actually meant quite a lot to me that people were reading this fic and going 'here's an idea and then adapting it to their own writing'. So ty sincerely to the few writers who have incorporated it.

Shamefaced at losing a company of Marines to unarmed orks the Imperium counter-attacked, not with orbital bombardment or the fielding of more Marines but with the tried and trusted Imperial Guard.

These people had trained for years to become the backbone of the Imperium's military. Drilled to mediocre skill and kept in line by the constant threat of death from the commissars it would be quite easy to draw a parallel between the two forces skills and order. Guard regiments were not sent in for shock tactics, they were used for slow meat-grinder wars which were all too common, wars where lives were burnt up on an astonishing scale.

The orks who excelled in close combat found themselves without blades and were cut down by concentrated fields of lasfire, inevitably the outlying fringes of the Waaagh! Were being pushed back before the news of the fight even reached the Warboss's tent while unprompted and in an attempt to stem the tide of battle Nob Bolta-Gunna – the very same Flashgit which had confronted the Warboss when this ill thought-out invasion begun – along with his elite guard of trained marksorks who were by ork standards almost legendary by their ability to hit a target through aim rather than number of bullets and most importantly unlike the rest of the orks; armed.

Laying down suppressing fire (not difficult when your weapon consists of three heavy bolters welded or taped together) the ork counter-attack began to push back the guardsman who tried to hide behind crude barricades to escape the punishing and above all fatal attack only to find that the barricades themselves were also falling apart under the bombardment of bolter rounds.

The guardsmen were in rout and the few surviving commissars foolish enough to try to lead by example or threaten the troops into going forwards found themselves cut down mercilessly by the gunfire though by which side was thoroughly debatable. With the narrow streets of the city the orks had established in and the superior firepower the Imperium's attack was in danger of being repulsed before it had even truly begun. Taking heart from the Nob's example or perhaps just because an ork knows a good fight when it see one, the other orks unarmed as they were charged the Guards lines, overwhelming them completely. Without choppas the hand to hand fighting was brutal and demoralising – for the guardsmen at last, the orks loved it - pushing onwards the ork counter-attack was getter more and more spread out within the city till lone orks were being easily picked off by squads who had not been in the front lines. Despite this the main charge continued still led Bolta-Gunna for a few brief minutes it seemed almost as though this one charge would defeat the entire Guard onslaught .

Far away from the battlefield however on both sides communications were being relayed to the COs and with the advantage of vox the Cadian Guardsmen were able to react first

Nob Bolta-Gunna sprayed another barricade with shots, pulping the barricade and the guardsmen behind it before charging onwards, only pausing for as long as it took to find and kill the remaining defenders. The Nob turned onto a different street, he'd lost track of which street he was on ages ago not that it mattered with so many humiez to kill, if ever there was an ork paradise it was this. The shot came without warning from one of the windows, catching the ork in the throat, still charging onwards more lasfire caught the ork, the legs, the arms, the chest. Still in an effort to carry on it's great attack Bolta-Gunna turned and sprayed one of the looted shops with his KustomBolta. Another shot caught him, this one right between the eyes.

With their leader dead the ork charge lost it's impetus and was quickly ripped apart by the Guard's reinforcements. The Cadian 289th Regiment pressed onward.

As to Bolta if a human had managed to rally their troops like that then they would have gone down in Imperial history as brave or valiant, considering this was ork Bolta would be lucky to get a mention as a footnote in a guard's journal and if he did his charge would be classified as stupid.

News had just made it back to Warboss 'eadbreaka

"WHA' YA MEAN DA BOYZ CANN'T FOIGHT!" He bellowed.

The cowering Nob answered whilst trying to avoid meeting the Warboss's eyes which he succeeded in doing whilst also trying not to be in the same universe as said warboss, which he failed.

"Well, ya see Boss, we got na choppas an' most da boyz don't know 'ow ta use a shoota proply. Wi'dout choppas Boss we ad it."

"No choppas ya say." said the Warboss, now much quieter as it out it's puny mind to the problem, "No choppas?"

The proverbial lightbulb lit up in the Warboss's single solution brain.

"USSSE DAAAA GRETCHIN!"

The ork horde came, yelling and running swinging their weapons over their heads like clubs, through sheer weight of numbers they overwhelmed the two Cadian regiments stationed on the planet.

_Extract from the journal of one of the survivors -_

I'd never seen anything like it, the damn greenskins were unstoppable, you shot one down and seven took it's place. The most frightening part about it was the screaming, the weapons they were using were smaller versions of the greenies. I found both terrible and comical the effectiveness of such a blunt weapon. They simply overwhelmed us, some fled, I fled.

I guess I'll end this entry I've got a firing squad to face in the morning.

**No other corresponding entry exists within Imperial archives,** the orks however are still talking about it.

Another battle gone, through sheer weight of numbers the orks had overwhelmed the Imperium's resistance, the emboldened Waaggh! began salvaging the left behind equipment, guns, ammunition and even a few tanks. Also left behind in the city they discovered was food. The gretchin breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

In the orks view the most important thing the humiez had left behind was the beer. Most of the could barely stand the thought of having to put up with even one more glass of gretchgin.

Author's Note: Better? Worse? Would you prefer pure comedy or more of this.


	5. The Dreaded Author's Note

Author's Note: I think I owe you all an apology over this one, I have removed the chapter and I will be rewriting it however I would like to point out that as reviewers it seems that you only get more annoyed when I listen to your advice.

First you said it needed a bit of life injected into it to make it last, then you say it should go back to how it was.

Well I'm simply just going to write what comes to mind so I hope you all find the replacement chapter more palatable, the replacement should be up... well, honestly? I haven't a clue, presumeably when I get bored of writing runescape and pokemon stuff. Sorry but thats simply how I work, I write a subject till the ideas run dry, on the bright side I'm starting to run dry so it shouldn't be more than a month

Till then dear readers...


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